


Soul Mates

by gray_autumn_sky



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:26:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8202007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gray_autumn_sky/pseuds/gray_autumn_sky
Summary: Robin makes a deal to come back--and he realizes that he and Regina share a soul.





	

He doesn’t want to let her go—and judging by the way she’s clinging to him, the way her fingers clutch at the fabric of his jacket and the way she melts into him, breathing him in between muffled cries, he knows that’s not something he’ll have to worry about any time soon—and in that moment, he knows that everything he sacrificed to get back to her was all worth it.

He hugs her a little bit closer, closing his eyes and he presses a kiss to her temple, and she tells him once more that she loves him. He nods and returns the sentiment, smiling a little—enjoying the way those three little words fall off her lips with a sense of urgency yet so much ease—and glad to finally have the chance to say it. For them, there were too many missed opportunities, too many thing left unsaid and too much story left to tell. When he left, he hadn’t been ready—he’d acted on impulse and though he had no regrets about protecting her or sacrificing his own life for hers—and he’d never been one to give up that easily. After all, they had future before them, and he had plans—and he was determined to see them through.

“How is this possible?” She murmurs quietly, her face still buried in his chest. “How are you real?” He looks down at her, smiling wistfully—he doesn’t want to tell her. “I don’t understand,” she tells him, tilting up her chin and looking up at him with wide, teary eyes. He lets out a shallow breath as he draws her back to him, pressing a kiss to her forehead and letting his lips linger against her soft skin—he doesn’t want to tell her. “And I want to… I need to,” she adds, taking a step inward and pressing her ear to his heart, exhaling gently at the sound of his heartbeat.

“Okay,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms tightly around her. “It’s… complicated, though.”

She laughs a little at that, and he can’t help but smile. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” She grins as she pulls back. “I love complicated.”

He nods as he brushes his thumbs over her cheeks, pushing away the slowly straying tears and smiling as he wonders where to start.

All his life, he’d been a planner—always quick on his feet and step or two ahead, always with a back-up plan and an escape route and never leaving anything to chance. He was quiet by nature, a careful observer of his surroundings who easily memorized details, storing away little bits of information until an opportunity presented itself for use. Their excursion to the Underworld had provided him ample opportunity to exercise those skills—and if he learned anything there, it was the value of a mortal’s soul.

It was during that excursion, in those quiet, hushed conversations that he was never meant to overhear that he first heard of Zeus’s crystal dagger and the low rumblings that it had fallen into Hades possession. To him the crystal dagger had been like any other rare and priceless item—something he kept eye and ear out for, something he was drawn to. He learned of its power and its strength, he knew the folklore behind it and by the time the returned to Storybrooke, he was well aware of the pain that it could bring. So when Hades pulled the dagger out in Regina’s office and pointed it in her direction, threatening to obliterate the very soul she’d worked so hard to save, he knew exactly what he had to do to spare her from that pain—and he knew that he could trust her to pull him out of it.

“Well, it started when you destroyed the crystal dagger,” he begins, slowly exhaling as he looks down at her. “My soul was trapped within it, and when you destroyed it, I was freed.”

“But you… you didn’t come back then,” she murmurs as her brow furrows, and he can tell that she’s trying desperately to understand and to believe. “That was… weeks ago.”

“It was,” he tells her with a nod. “I was free to move on.”

“To an afterlife?”

Again, he nods. “Yes.” He watches as she blinks up at her, her head tipping to the side as her lip catches between her teeth, still struggling to accept his presence as something she can hold onto. “But I wasn’t ready.”

“I… I wouldn’t think you’d have a choice,” she murmurs in reply. “Death is… supposed to be final.”

“Well, yes,” he says with a slow nod. “Usually it is.” Taking a breath, he leans in and kisses her forehead. “But rules are made to be broken and everything has a price.”

“A price…”

“Everything has one,” he repeats slowly, as a small and sad smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “I made a deal, Regina.”

“With who?” she asks, her hands beginning to tremble as she lets out a shaky breath.

“That’s not important.”

“Robin…”

There’s a sense of panic that hitches in her voice, and he doesn’t want to tell her that he sold his soul to the highest bidder for the chance to come to back to her, for the chance to see their children grow up and the chance to live the life they were meant to have together. He doesn’t want to tell her that when the rush of this moment ends, there will be an emptiness inside of him and a hollowness that will never go away. He doesn’t want to tell her the sinking feeling at his core has he wonders how this will change him, what it will do to his psyche and affect it’ll have one the relationships he’s tried so desperately to save. He does want to tell her that he’s fueled by the memories, memories made by the man he used to be, and he doesn’t want to tell her the man she fell in love with is now merely a shell. He doesn’t want to tell her because to him, it isn’t real—not yet—and it’s so hard for him to fathom what it means to live without a soul. And, even now, even knowing what’s promised to come and the changes he’ll face to simply exist, he can’t help but feel that he got the better end of the bargain.

 “What’s important is that I’m here—and I’m here to stay.”

“Tell me,” she says in a hushed whisper, desperation hitching in her voice as fear resonates in her eyes. “I need to know because I need to know that this—that you—are real and not going away again and…”

“I sold my soul,” he cuts in. “It was the only way…”

“You _sold_ your _soul_?” She blinks—not with anger or even confusion, but with something behind her eyes that he can’t quite place—as she slowly reaches out and presses her palm to chest. He watches as her eyes sink closed for a moment and she inhales a breath, breathing out in rhythm with of his heartbeat. “That… doesn’t make sense.”

“It was the only thing of value I had left.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head as her as opens her eyes to look at him. “If you sold your soul, you… you wouldn’t be you. Your thoughts, you feelings, your memories, none of that would matter to you, but they do. And without your soul you wouldn’t be standing here in front of me, looking at me the way that you are, looking at me like you…” Her voice halts and he watches as a slow smile edges onto her lips—and it’s not at all the reaction he’d anticipated. Once more, her head tips to the side as her smile deepens as realization settles in her eyes. “Oh…”

Robin blinks a couple of times, and suddenly, it’s he who doesn’t understand.

“Soul mates are different than true loves,” she murmurs. “I never understood what that meant, exactly…” She shrugs her shoulder. “But, I get it now.”

“I’m sorry, love,” he says, offering her a sheepish grin. “Now I’m not following.”

“You don’t _need_ a soul, not one of your own, anyway,” she tells him simply. “We’ll use mine for the both of us.”

 


End file.
